Catalyst
by NeonZangetsu
Summary: Why does it always have to be the best friend? Ichigo finds himself wondering as he stares outward at her, stares and recalls the words spoken to him by the enemy, spoken and striking, like a chord somewhere deep within? IchigoxTatsuki Post Arrancar Arc.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Okay, DO NOT KILL ME! This is my take on how the Final battle with Aizen should have gone, should have been, could have been, would have been, had the manga made it RIGHT! But alas I guess this fan-oriented version will do, because believe it or not, I hadn't even thought of this until I saw it in a dream and yes, I SAW IT IN A DREAM, woke up and was life WTF i HAVE TO WRITE THIS DOWN BEFORE I FORGET! Setting is Fake Karakura Town, Directly AFTER Ichigo's arrival. PEOPLZ! And yet, this beauty is based entirely off crack and for those of you who wanted this to happen what should I say?**

**Enjoy!**

**Enjoy this and Ichigo's badassnes! **

**Rememeber, Bleach Ost highly recommended!**

_**(Catalyst)**_

Cold fury burned the world white and black as he descended to the streets.

"Tatsuki."

"You know, he told me something." Ichigo smiled, loosely embracing her from behind his lips soft against her hair as he repeated the words, the motive, of Sosuke Aizen."Become a part of myself." He whispered, into her hair, his lips moving loosely morosely, converying a final bit of strength and defiance into those tear-stained tresses. Tatsuki went rigid. "What do you think that mean, Arisawa?"

**"!"**

He saw the realization, the knowledge, the motivation in her eyes, saw what she would do, saw what it would take, saw the world come tumbling down. She sighed, small, weak, and unbroken as she leaned back in his arms, brought an arm upward, backward, cradled his cheek...

And then their lips met with enough force to jar their teeth.

Sosuke Aizen smiled where he stood, smiled as a whsiper of something not quite shunpo not quite sonido, took the two of them away.

"Welcome home, Kurosaki Ichigo."

Ichigo pirouetted out into the air, setting his beloved down upon the balcony of Hueco Muendo within an infinite delicateness that no hollowfied vizard should posess. Tatsuki snifled, brokenly, as she gave one final glannce to the form of Mugetsu. This wasn't quite Hueco Muendo, nor was it Karakura, nor was it Seireitei. Aizen's reaitsu had distorted the worlds already, but Ichigo's, oh Ichigo's put the world itself back on its axis and left huge clumps of shatere reality laying all around.

She was staring at such a reality-breaker now.

"I promise, this will be the last time you'll ever see me like this." His words were gentle, soft, kind, comfort, and comfortable, where they should be nothing; nothingness at all. As if he hadn't painted himself into a corner already, Ichigo thought, but that too, was gallows humor. Tatsuki couldn't even smile, broken was she was by the sudden explosion of reaitsu that had signaled his abrupt return to this, the place of his birth, all hesitation gone, all indecision, vanquished, and wiped away.

"Ichigo...Tatsuki sniffled, her chestnut brown softening when they locked with the crisscrossing ruby red and crimson irises of the Final Getsuga Tenshou Form. "Is this really it? Is this really the way it has to end?" He reached forward and cupped her cheek, and in that moment, despite the spectators, there truly was no one else. Aizen must have been content to let the two have their moment upon the far-off rooftop, for there was no ensuing surge of reiatsu, or blast, or explosion to signify his renewed assault upon the vizard.

"Yes."

Tatsuki felt her spine stiffen.

"Yes." Ichigo nodded, sweeping a hand toward his face, disagreement etched into his featureless mask as he wiped it away, revealed the kinder, softer, gentler human-half from within. He took a small step _-for someone like Ichigo it was more like a stride- _and laid both arms down upon her, smiling softly as they circled her, pulled her closed, and reminded her of those last tricklings of hollowfied reaitsu evident in his veins and form once again and the mas slid to the side of his face.

"I promise you, _I promise,_ this will be the end." She heard his words and wordlessly, soundlessly those tears came and Tatsuki started crying and shaking her head and saying he was stupid so stupid for even considering, taking, choosing her when he had all those others to choose from! Matsumoto, Rukia, Nel, Yoruichi, and instantaneously, he reached down, and tilted her head upward, bringing her face to his as the last remants of his mask whisked themselves away into the endless night that was Hueco Muendo.

"Arisawa." The words burgeoning, swelling, rising within her chest and ricocheting wildly within her skull as he spoke them to her, Tatsuki abruptly felt a level of controlled determination be stripped off and away from her, and abruptly, longing replaced all that was weak within her eyes, as his prescence drove the frailty from her body and made her feel strong, so strong that she would snap Aizen in half, in mother-blanking half if he were to interrupt this crucial moment.

"Kiss me." Gods, was this what it felt like, to say those words? Tatsuki felt as though a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders, as though she'd been sick this entire time, and abruptly, she was all but cured, renewed, by the vizard in her arms. "Christ almighty Ichigo, just kiss me."He did kiss her then, and Tatsuki had the where-with-all not to faint. He did kiss her then, and Tatsuki _did _have the strength to kiss him back, to return the emotions that had so viciously back-fired upon the realms only hours before.

It felt safe, it smelled good, and apocalypse-be-damned, this. Felt. Right.

He kissed her then, an infinite starburst of warmth and love and endless grief. Tatsuki whimpered as he curled her legs upward and swept her off her feet. She gave no resistance. She offered no doubts no regrets, not even the slightest hint of hesitation. Her lips parted in anticipation, he tongue seeking his for a moment, finding it In a moment of forgiveness...

And then she was in his arms everything that was soft and supple and woman-to-be, womanly, flush and pressed against him, and infinitely yielding. She flung an arm around his neck and he, dipped, put an arm around the dipping subtle curve of her hips and waist.

She gasped as they pulled apart, the moment lost, but never forgotten. She fisted a hand within those strange, raven black locks, and she buried her head into the crook of his neck, and she started to cry, to cry all over again, as her feelings were systematically overturned, and accepted within that instant that bespoke of nothing more than love; a love of the kinder, infinite, younger, and everlasting sort. It was the kind of love one had for one's best friend, the love of a friendship sustained throughout years upon years of hardship, and realized, only now, now, when it was already too late.

"Come back." She murmured. "You'd better damn well come back to me after all this, Ichigo! Damn, she could feel her voice rising, the sharp stacato of sobs filling the night between the merged realms of hollow and human and shinigami. "Really! I mean it! I won't forgive you if you die in a place like this without even saying-

He smiled, snarkily, but there was no venom in his voice.

"Going soft on me, Tatsuki-chan?"

_'Chan!'_

The suffix hit her like a blow to the ribs and, again, Tatsuki crumpled against him, tasting his jawline with her lips, her eyes when she finally sought his mouth, her fingertips as she slid them shut, and finally her body when her hands curled into his; intoxicated, inebriated, and struggling to memorize everything there was to know about him, of him, while there was still time. Oh but it couldn't last and how bittersweet this moment must have been! Ichigo set her down them, a final kiss on her lips, and forever leaving her with the taste of him. They were back in the streets again, and a small shudder seemed to leave Kurosaki as he released his childhood friend.

"Goodbye, Tatsuki."

Ichigo was already hardening, turning to stone as he turned his gaze toward an overwrought Aizen, an immeasurably powerful and omnipotent being capable of erasing one's existence in an instant. Ichigo took him by the fact and he flung him halfway across the damned city. Ichigo marched after Aizen, and Zangetsu flashed out like a coiled viper. Sosuke flew out of the city and Ichigo barreled into him with such force that Tatsuki felt her teeth vibrate. All that, and he hadn't even crossed the street yet, damnit!

Ichigo risked one final glance over his shoulder, and then he was gone.

**"Let's end this, Aizen."**

**A/N: Hope you liked it, Ichigo KEEPS his badassness powers in this fic, I just couldn't stand to see him lose them so strings shall be pulled...XD**


	2. A Beatdown of Epic Proportions

**A/N: Well, this was originally written just as a what the hey kind of fic because it was so heartwarming and such. But meh, I'll continue it, I don't see why not. Get ready for the ass kicking of your life, Aizen! Muugetsu Ichigo's 'bout to lay a beatdown on your ass-woot-WOOT! And I have no idea why I'm in such a IchigoxTatsuki-centric mood at the moment, I just is, I guess, and remember, Ichigo will be KEEPING his powers, but Aizen's still going to get himself pwned...with a sick twist!**

**Enjoy!**

**Enjoy this and Ichigo's badassnes! **

**Rememeber, Bleach Ost highly recommended!**

_**(Final Getsuga...or not.)**_

As a rule, Kurosaki Ichigo tried to abstain from violence. He

"Let's do this, Aizen." Kurosaki Ichigo stared down his opponent over the steel of his blade. His body thrumming with power. Cells saturated with raw reaitsu. Aizen was an insect to him. Moreso now than ever, with those garish and hideous wings poking out his back. How the hell was a butterfly supposed to be scary? Kurosaki Ichigo didn't know, and quite frankly, he didn't much care. He dropped Aizen like a hot potato and watched him crash into the ground, here, far from the Fake Karakura Town.

Far, _far _away from anything he might want to do to Tatsuki.

"It's sad." Ichigo sighed. "How you've managed to anger me."

Aizen was incredulous.

"Angered you?" Blast, he really did have supreme confidence in his abilities, didn't he?"

Ichigo gnashed his teeth and disappeared.

_"I'll end all of this in an instant."_

Aizen flew. Literally. His feet left the ground as Ichigo's hand clamped down upon his face and hauled him forward. Soil and bedrock were all that this supposed "god" tasted as the shinigami burst into a furious blue of black and orange, dragging him into the stone and earth and grass with such force that Sosuke Aizen momentarily wondered at how lesser creatures could possibly enjoy the taste of such foul sustenance, regardless of of essential they might be to one's dietary supplement.

And then he was free.

Ichigo hurled Aizen from his grip and let the former captain twirl end over end for a few moments before he put an end to it. With a dull thump of sonido, he thudded into existence behind the flailing fly and brought his blade down, flat, instead of the tip. Aizen crashed into the ground with enough force to create a small explosion. The hybrid glared into the dust and rotten rust his attack had created, and he waited for the imminent re-mergence of his opponent.

Guys like Aizen didn't go down easily, if at all.

"End it in an instant?"

Ichigo rounded on the sound, and steel met steel for the first time in nearly three months.

"I see." The superflious entity droned onward as the two exhanged a blistering flury of strikes, counterstrikes, blocks, and breaks. "I understand now, Kurosaki Ichigo!" Ichigo scowled and renewed his attack, refusing to allow a single break in the constant blur that was Tensa Zangetsu. "Why you lost your spiritual pressure! Or really, I should say, you have thrown it away! Thrown it away for sake of greater physical power than my own!" Ichigo almost guffawed at that. "You converted all of your spiritual pressure into your body's physical capabilities! Arm strength, leg strength, gripping, throwing, running, you improved upon these abilities and discarded your reaitsu because you have given up on the ideal of doing battle with me!"

Was that really what he thought?

"Pathetic."

Ichigo frowned as a mountain inexplicably shattered. As a lake withered into nothingness. When the clouds themselves burst within each parry, _riposte_, or near-miss. No matter what he did, or what Aizen attempted, the two were equal in one aspect. They were gods. Their very breath took the land and reshaped it to their whims, creating new landscapes in one instant, destroying it in the next. Sosuke _delighted _in it, expressing great enthusiasm, unable to believe _his _powers had grown to such an extent that he could shatter the land at the slightest whom or fancy.

_Ichigo lamented his incompetency._

"I'm happy, Kurosaki Ichigo." Aizen smiled against a rather viscious block. "Thanks to you, I can test these powers that transcend those of hollows and soul reapers to my hearts content!" Ichigo struck and abruptly, Aizen was off balance. Ichigo let his arm hang there, letting Aizen know he could have easily cut him. Of course, Aizen saw it as an accidental increase in strengthon his own part and once again, Ichigo lamented his ignorance. He was deliberately neglecting to inform Aizen of the fact that, although he was powerful, these mountains being destroyed were by _Ichigo's _blade, not Aizen's, to the utter neglect of the thrice evolved being.

"I'm not done yet, Kurosaki Ichigo!"

Ichigo flickered out of existence and reappeared miles away.

"Did you really think I couldn't follow your movements?"

He leapt away in the instant that his footing was demolished. He landed effortlessly amidst a powerful thud of sound, and didn't even bother to search. He knew, even trapped within the cloud of dust as he was, where his enemy was coming from. Tensa Zangetsu flicked outward and Ichigo felt the despair of Kyouka Suigetsu as he stopped her cold and her master remained ignorant to the fact that the human was toying with them, testing his own limits, as well as their own.

_'Fool! Stop this! Stop it at once! He's going to kill us!'_ He could her soft and planitive cires and Aizen's ignorance irked him. _'You must stop!' _Though his right arm had also fused with Zangetsu, Ichigo was very much aware of his zanpakuto, fused to his arm as it was. Aizen, though Kyouka Suigetsu was there, exposed within his tightly clenched fist, could have been leagues away and underwater for all he seemed to care about his zanpakutou's warnings.

_'Stop this instant, Aizen!'_

Ichigo almost felt sorry for her, knowing she was going to die and with naught a thing he could do about it. Or could he? Kurosaki Ichigo exhaled softly as Aizen's irritating monlogue went on and on, on for what felt like an eternity. So when the "almighty" being declared their evolutions to be on different levels, Ichigo perked up noticeably, his entire body tensing at the smile his enemy wore. But Aizen immediately dispelled this fear within his own ignorance, claiming that he could shatter Tensa Zangetsu with a single blow, if he so wished.

_'Please! Aizen!'_

Oh, that tore it.

Ichigo raised his free hand, the hand not wrapped in his zanpakutou. He caught Kyouka Suigetsu and pulled. He felt resistance, at first, but since as the two halves of Zangetsu had finally ceased their bickering and fused during the battle inside his mindscape, and following his subsuquent kiss with Tatsuki, Ichigo had an overwhelming amount of room within his soul. Almost instantaneously, power came flooding into him, filling his numbed nerves and slightly tired arms with a renewed sense of vigour. He didn't bother to speak, Aizen wasn't so ignorant that he wouldn't notice such a thing. Ichigo simply held onto the zanpakuto a few seconds longer than was neccessary.

The groud cratered behind him, billowing outward in a roiling tide of unwarranted destruction. And Ichigo held onto the blade. He felt emotions that were not his own. Hesitation. Reluctance. Anger. And then a sorrow so great and mournful in its heartbreak that he nearly cried out as a gash of silver _-chances were that Aizen thought it a trick of the light-_ rushed down the blade, into Tensa Zangetsu, and came coiling up the chain around his arm and plunged into Ichigo's chest.

He felt a momentary flicker of relief, then sorrow, then resignation, then relief again, ebbing away into curiousity. She'd met Zangetsu's fused form. Ichigo emerged from the torrent of emotions just as Aizen jerked himself, hollowed blade and all, away from his human opponent. Ichigo felt a brief flicker of sorrow, replaced by vindication as he came stalking forward, a stray spark of red and black and now blue -that was new- filling the tapered tip that housed the two spirits. If Aizen had tried to draw upon the illusiory powers of his sword just then, he must have realized that something was not at all as it should have been, or was meant to be.

"What?" A broken whisper emerged from the distance separating them. "What have you done?" He looked at his sword, looked to Ichigo, back to the sword.

"Why so surprised?" Ichigo found himself asking. "Is it that surprising that I caught your sword?"

_"What?"_

"Does it scare you?" Ichigo pressed. "Something that you can't comprehend happened before your very eyes?"

_"Interesting."_

Aizen drew back, smiling, and Ichito felt himself and his new ally tense.

"Something that I can't comprehend, you say?" Aizen hissed. _"_Don't talk as though you've won, Kurosaki Ichigo! It was simply a case of your physical strength exceeding mine." He raised a hand into a fist, a finger defiantly pointed toward the heavens, as though to spite Kami himself. _"_Miracles like that happen from time to time. But I am a being who surpasses even that." Ichigo lowered his blade as a dark and violent aura engulfed Aizen from head to doe. "But to be certain, we will see to it that miracles like that never happen again by crushing you to pieces with kido!"Ichigo arched an eyebrow as the chant began, and as the lengthy incantation was finally completed, as four walls of black and dark violet rose around him, cutting him off from the outside world. "Now that I fully transcend both hollows and Soul Reapers, this is a Kurohitsugi with a full incantation! It unleashes enough gravity to warp time and space! The likes of you could never comprehend it, human!"

_**"Enough."**_

With a swing of the hand it shattered. Ichigo didn't even bother to use his blade, such was his scorn. He swept his bare hand outwards, and obliterated the Black Coffin. Broke it, obliterated it. Turned all those many blades and stabbing apparatuses within, into harmless fodder. Pathetic. He didn't bother to explain, didn't waste his breath as he swept forward, barreling through that spell. Crushing another, more powerful kido as he emerged from the darkness, and another spell, another, _and still yet another, _as he strode toward Aizen, titanic, almighty, relentless in his desire to end the man who had started this all nearly a year before.

"You don't seem to realize, _do you?"_ Ichigo unshouldered his blade. "My power is greater than the power you have right now." He strode inward, and Aizen slinked backward in disbelief, in retreat and, glaringly obvious, in fear. Ichigo didn't slow as shards of black iron fell from the sky above, his attention was fixed, riveted upon his opponent. "The force that erased that mountain...it was my sword." A glimmer of fear appeared in the face of Aizen Sosuke as he saw the blade manifesting at the human's hip. Good. Let him know fear. Ichigo surged forward, and Aizen screamed.

"Here I come, _Aizen."_

Aizen _seemed _to realize something was wrong, but before he could understand what, exactly, Ichigo brought the full force of a dark crimson Getsuga flowing down into his face. Aizen flew backward as the empowered blast smashed into was not quite as powerful as a Saigo Getsuga Tenshou would be, but nevertheless, the black moon fang was easily a hundred times stronger than what it'd once been. Aizen spattered across the soil and spoke no more. Ichigo stood over him for all of an instant and not-so-subtly brought a foot into the cavity of his chest.

Aizen flew.

Literally.

His body left the soil and suddenly he was flying, without the air of his wings, his body helpless against the cylopean forces exerted upon his frame. He had even _less _time to realize this as the Getsuga filled all his vision and he flung his hands out. A thin wedge of reaitsu forced itself between him and death. Then Aizen burned in the fires of revenge and plunged into the earth. His outstretched hands did nothing, but the wedge protected him and drove him under the soil's skin like a splinter. The wedge collapsed an instant after he hit. The impact slapped him as brutally as if a giant had clapped his hands together over the whole of his body...

"Is that all you have?"

And Ichigo was behind him, another opaque swathe of flames hurtling toward Aizen even as he emerged from his coffin of earth and stone.

Aizen slammed into the ground with a _thump._ There was no white-hot flash of pain as he'd expected. Instead Ichigo was in front of him, _again._ Sosuke choked aloud as Tensa Zangetsu drilled into flesh and bone and sinew for the third time. Ichigo swept his blade outward, and suddenly, Sosuke Aizen was _bleeding._ Ichigo didn't give him the time to comprehend it. Ichigo was already _turning,_ rounding, driving, slicing, raining down an endless rain of both fist and blade into the body of his opponent and soon, Aizen's so called, "flawless existence" was very much flawed.

Very much flawed, indeed.

"What an odd feeling." Ichigo said." When I backed away from you in our last battle, you asked me why. But now you're doing the exact same thing. So let me ask you the same question. Why did you back away just now?

Aizen frowned.

"I see, so you're pleased that you stopped my sword and stole her from me?" His fist began to tremble. "Are you pleased that you overcame my kido?" That once handsome visage twisted itself within a scowl of murderous rage and hopeless futility. "Are you pleased that you put a scar on my body?" Aizen ravished him with a baleful glare, and Ichigo smiled, smiled, as he pulled a hand toward those chestnut brown eyes, corming a claw of hellish reaitsu that gave Aizen pause.

_**"Shut the fuck up, Aizen." **_Ichigo _spat_, pouring a year worth of venom into his words as the porcelain flowed across his visage. "Am I happy I made a fool of you? Yes. Am I happy that I've stripped all that pride and arrogance away? Fuck yes." Aizen was all but quivering from fury as Ichigo hauled that sword from its sheathe, that sword, his sword, his zanpakutou! "Oh, and I'm fucking thrilled that I took this sword from you, because, well, let's face it."

Ichigo allowed his lips to pull into a uncharacterstic sneer; the coup de grace, the icing on the cake, as he waved the now remanifested, the now HIS, belonging to him, Kyouka Suigetsu in the face of Sosuke Aizen and his hollow, empty blade that would no more serve him than he would win here today. Ichigo watched that rage blacken and blister and boil as Aizen's face became more and more unrecognizeable, as his fury platuead and then became volcanic beneath the weight of a simple sentence:

"You never deserved it anyway, **shinigami."**

_**"DON'T BE SO FULL OF YOURSELF!"**_

Ichigo let the sneer fall from his face as crakcs spread across the former captain's face.

"**_HUUUUUMMMMMMAAAAAN!"_**

Ichig slapped a hand to _his _face, the hollow mask manifesting itself in the same instant that Aizen flew into an insidious rage and a sickening transformation. Ichigo watched the skin peeling from his visage and leaving a blackened skull in its wake, for his own had emerged by the time Aizen erhad finished, Ichigo already had a fully charged cero primed between his horns and read to fire. As the hideous creature that had become Sosuke Aizen, finally emerged, a blistering wall of crimson and scarlet was there to greet him.

Fire flowed outward and roiled over the disbelieving form of Aizen. The twin cero roared through him with tremendous force even as it filled his vision, olbiterating disgusting flaps of skin and tenacles that hung off his body. Ichigo barreled for him, and Ichigo shrieked in disbelief as the hand closed around his face, as the skin turned chalk white. The hollowfied Aizen gazed up at the hollowfied Ichigo and realized that a cero, a massive cero, was being charged into the palm that held his face.

That grim-skull mask reverberated furiously.

**"I'll fucking crush you, AIZEN!"**

A monstrous blast of fire exploded upon Aizen's frozen frame, the flames roiling over him and onto the ground below, setting the trees ablaze. Ichigolanded amid the fires, trying to make sense of what had occured within the blaze, furious golden irises turning, swiveling, reflecting the orange from the flames that surrounded them on all sides. he spun his weapon at the first sign of movement, and lo and behold, one of Aizen's legs flew threw the air. Spinning end over end, Ichigo didn't even watch it fall. He calmly reached a hand up to the demonic shield covering his face and pulled it aside within a gentle sweep of the hand, exposing hollowfied irises and sclera as the flames boiled around the two of them.

"Is that it?" He asked the prostrate form of Aizen Sosuke. "That was your _cero?" _Disgust boiled within his voice as he pulled the human horned skull downward and over his face for a second time. With nary more than a sharp burst of static, he was gone. Aizen flopped madly forward, struggling to bring his blade-arm around as Tensa Zangetsu crashed into it. The free Kyouka Suigetsu screamed a cry of loathing and disgust for every blow in which she struck out against her former shinigami, and the monster he had become.

Ichigo felt nothing where that empty blade struck his skin, he felt only pity, pity, and a fury that exceeded the human capacity known as righteousness. Ichigo was godlike in his blistering fury, holy, an instrument of judgement and justice come to removed the corruption and decay that currently flopped and flailed and twisted before him. Ichigo took that anger and he brought even ounce of it down upon Sosuke Aizen's skull with a rythymic _twang-twang-**TWANG!**_

**"I, a true transcendent being, will kill _you!"_** Aizen was beyond saving now. _S_uch was his dementia, such was the will of the Hogyoku. Ichigo uttered nothing more than a grunt. The two monsters, one a man in a mask who had transcended all his pain and suffering; the other, a twisted, pervaded version of his former self, fought back and forth in the fires, for what seemed like days. Cero flew amok and Bala ricocheted wildly around the walls of the crater, many of Ichigo's landing, none of Aizen's coming even remotely close to connecting.

**"By killing you I will break free from insignificant soul reapers and hollows alike!"** Aizen's hand tightened around Ichigo's throat. **"It's over, _Kurosaki!" _**Indeed it was, as the vizard flung a hand outward, gouging out Aizen's right eye. Sosuke screamed. Screamed, as the clawed digit pierced his iris and sent white mucus and blood leaking out. Ichigo didn't hesitate to thrust his hand forward, to seize a small jewel from the foremost of the three holes that occupied the chest of Aizen Sosuke.

_"So this, is the Hogyoku." _Ichigo frowned._ "I wonder..._

Aizen made the mistake of trying to stop him as Ichigo held it before his mask. Snapped his jaws open. Swallowed. Zangetsu and Kyouka Suigetsu flashed left and right, and Sosuke Aizen toppled to the ground, limbless. Ichigo slammed a foot into his chest and thrust the horns of his mask downward, pointed direct, directly into the face of Sosuke Aizen. But he did not fire. Instead, his orange hair burned itself black, and armor rippled across his chest, turning his irises a furious bloodred and his mask a jagged, opaque black, the streaks changing to white as the grey plating flowed steadily.

**"I'll **_show _**you **_something _**special,** _Aizen."_ His voice reverberated with another lending Kurosaki Ichigo another, titanic tone. **"This** _is _**the **_form _**of **_the _**Final **_Getsuga _**Tenshou**. _I _**don't **_need _**it **_to _**defeat **_you_, **but **_this _**body**, _this _**form**, _will _**be **_the _**one **_that _**breaks **_you."_ Ichigo revealed the Hogyoku, held in his hand, not swallowed. Aizen strained toward it, but Ichigo smiled. In a movement so blinding, so agile and incredibly fast that it defied reality, Kurosaki Ichigo curled the fingers of his hand into a fist crushed the Hogyoku within the palm of that hand.

**"This **_Hogyoku_...**no **_longer _**belongs to you**, _Aizen."_

It shattered like so much glass.

_**"NO!" **_

Aizen screamed and in that scream, Ichigo summoned a surge of reaitsu that Aizen could not sense. Could not sense he realized, because this creature was on an even higher level than himself, and that, that was why he had not sensed so much as a modicum of reaitsu from the boy. The boy that was about to kill him, as his transformation crumpled away from his flesh, two twin conflagrations of spiraling energy encompassing his entire existence. They swelled to mammoth proportions, and still, still, they grew to such a size that Aizen saw red, red, and only red.

**"It **_ends _**now, Aizen."**

Ichigo swept both hands outward, the shards he had shattered swirling about his body in a fine cloud. He arced Tensa Zangetsu high, his mask snapping open and swirling with dar red light darker; a veritable malestrom of ill intent, trickling into the cero, the Getsuga, making both techniques as one the Cero Oscuras and a Getsuga Tenshou so immense that it bound Aizen in place. Held in Ichigo's hand, raised high, Kyouka Suigetsu came crashing down and arced toward his neck, the katana spinning overhead for a lazy moment, halting the twirl to let it rest on his shoulder effortlessly. He calmly reached a hand up to the flames, and a sudden gush of pressure nudged them aside, creating a path amongst the otherwrise insurmountable inferno that surrounded them.

**"I cannot die! This cannot kill me!" **Aizen bellowed furiously. **"You will not succeed-**

A jade green lance of lightning slammed into his throat, strangling his reply. Worless, Aizen turned toward the one who had thrown it, only for a series of diamoned tipped tarts to wedge themselves in what remained of his stomach, further pinning him in place already. Who? How! Kurosaki Ichigo had not moved from-

"Huh." A lazy voice drawled from somewhere Aizen could not quite see. "We're alive..._again."_

"So it would seem."

_"Tch_...what a pain in the ass this back-to-life crap is, I mean, I _died_, for crying out loud."

"I was also quite aware of my demise."

"No shit, sherlock!"

Only then did Aizen realize there was a _second _being standing over him, two jet black wings spread furiously against the sky and the flames. An ashen gray finger jutted outward as well, a swirl of dark and black greens merging with the reds ands whites and blacks. Aizen Sosuke stared upward into the golden iris and murky green sclera of a demon straight from hell. If Kurosaki Ichigo was at all put off by the newcomer's unexplained entrance, and all the while, he'd failed to notice those trailing streaks of blue and azure at the corner of his vision.

Three! There were three individuals! His gaze desperately swung back and forth and left and right and found nothing; no escape as the blasts swelled to their ultimate climax, three connecting pillars of vermillion, emerald, and sapphire, each swelling to the breaking point with an inhuman, godlike reaitsu. Ichigo smiled as a fourth, -yet another who had been dead- leveled an unmistakeable pistol into his face, its tip swelling to the brim with azure flames and energy. He'd been in contact with each of these individuals.

**CURSES!**

Ichigo grinned mirthlessly.

**"Seems **_the _**will **_of _**the **_Hogyoku _**has **_spoken_, **Aizen." **Ichigo chuckled, the last of the shards fluttering away from him for what, Aizen feared, might be another of his victims. Ah, but it was not at all wise to feed fear to the Hogyoku now, was it? **"You'll **_be _**dying, **_now, _**Aizen."** The ascended Ichigo tittered as a huge white sword _-damnit not her too- _filled his vision with saffron, ushering the conflagration to its ultimate and final climax.

Red.

Green.

Blue.

Gold.

White.

**"Cero **_Oscuras_/**Cero Oscuras."**

Five blasts converged into one and Sosuke Aizen was lost.

**A/N: Rehehehe...I'VE WAITED TOO DAMN LONG TO DO THAT TO AIZEN! HAHA! BUH-BYE! Anybody wanna guess who all that was at the end? I went out of my way to make two of them pretty damn clear, but eh, guess you'll just have to wait and see, huh? Now remember...****REVIEW! You wouldn't want to make THEM angry and end up like Aizen now..._would you?_**


End file.
